Twenty sermons preached at Oxford before His Majesty, and elsewhere

1. For him to be Gods servant was an Humiliation, though for us, it be the greatest honour to be Gods servants. Saint Paul makes it his prime Epithet, Paul a servant of Jesus christ. And David calls himself the servant of the Lord, O Lord I am thy servant, truly I am thy servant. But it was an Humiliation for Christ to become Gods servant. For him who thought it no robbery to be equal with God to become Gods servant, and to take a nature on him, that he might say, My Father is greater then I; behold my Father and I were one, but now taking on me a humane nature, I am made inferior to my Father, I am become his servant: Behold my servant in whom I am well pleased; Isa. 53. By his knowledge shall my righteous servant justify many: There is much difference in servants. A free servant and a bond servant. A very bond-man doth Christ make himself, being man, and accounts it as a great honour as may be, not only to be his Fathers servant, but his bond man. Can I show that there is any such humiliation as this? Look on Heb. 10.5. Sacrifice and burnt offerings thou wouldst not, but a body hast thou prepared me, these words have relation to that of the Psalmist, Psalm 40.6. Sacrifice and burnt offerings thou didst not desire, but mine ears hast thou opened; it is in the margin, mine ears hast thou digged, or hast thou bored. The boring of the ear was an expression of everlasting servitude. Another servant that had not yet his ear bored, might be free at the year of Redemption, at the seventh year: but if not, his ear was bored that he might be a servant for ever according to that, Exod. 21.4. He that loved his service so well as to have his ear bored, is a servant for evermore. Mine ear Lord hast thou bored, I will be thy servant for ever. Christ took on him the form of such a servant; nay Christ was more then an ordinary slave: He was one bound to an everlasting slavery, for he was the Son of an hand-maid: Now the Children of an hand-maid were not to go forth at the year of Jubilee. Exod. 21. The Wife and her Children shall be her Masters, and he shall go out by himself: Meaning thus, he that was the son of an hand-maid, must be bound. Partus sequitur ventrem. Now that Christ was the son of an hand-maid, we have Mary's own confession, Behold the hand-maid of the Lord, and he hath looked upon the low estate of his hand-maid,